No city appears poised to benefit more from the sudden collapse of the GOP’s hold on Congress in last week’s midterm elections than Washington, D.C. Newly empowered Democrats plan to end one of the city’s great frustrations: the lack of a vote in Congress. The new Congress should act immediately on this long-delayed promise to grant the District representative a full vote in the House of Representatives.
It should be a national embarassment that the nearly 600,000 people who reside in the heart of the nation’s capital have no say in the lawmaking branch of the federal government. Wyoming, which has a considerably smaller population, has the far greater political power that comes with a full congressional delegation. Yet Republican fears of giving the Democrats a guaranteed House seat in the overwhelmingly liberal District has long stymied any real attempts to grant voting rights to the city.
The last time any real progress was made on the issue was in the early ‘90’s, when Democrats changed House rules to allow the District’s non-voting Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), and other non-voting delegates, the right to cast votes on the House floor—but only when the vote was guaranteed to pass or fail without their vote. In essence, the District could vote, but only when it didn’t matter. Even that inadequate measure was taken away when Republicans took over in early 1995.
Holmes, with Republican representative Thomas Davis (R-Va.), unveiled the D.C. Fair and Equal House Voting Rights Act of 2006 earlier this year, offering the Republican majority a compromise: a vote for the District in return for what will be tantamount to a guaranteed Republican vote in Utah. The bill has rekindled hope in city residents, but has languished for months, unable to come to a full vote in the House.
“The Utah legislature still hasn’t approved the new District map,” Norton spokesperson Doxie McCoy said. The bill will hopefully pass when Congress meets in December, she added.
In one of the first policy pronouncements of the new House leadership, the soon-to-be Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) promised to change the House rules to grant Norton the voting rights she enjoyed before the Republicans took power. She later added that she fully supports the Norton-Davis bill as well, but the mention of the prior, weaker policy was enough to stir the fear that Democrats would not move swiftly on the measure, as Mayor-Elect Adrian Fenty told the Washington Post last week.
With a new, very pro-District majority, Democrats have no reason why they should not pass this bill soon. Save an unlikely presidential veto, the District should soon be on its way to receiving the benefits that entail having, if not a full delegation, at least one voting representative in Congress.
Georgetown students live in the District for at least four years. The votes cast by this representative will affect our neighborhood, our city and our country. If those are things you care about, write to your congressman and ask that he or she cast a vote to end the longstanding taxation without representation here in the District.
